


A Toast

by Kamato



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Drama, F/F, Post-Reaper War, drunks, shots!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-03 19:48:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8727889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kamato/pseuds/Kamato
Summary: Two years after the Reaper War, the Alliance finally gets the relays up and running again, and the crew of the Normandy get together once again.





	

“To Jacob Taylor. May Cerberus never see his like again.” The redhead human woman with the hawkish nose lifted her shot glass high as she spoke, and the myriad aliens around the round table did the same, one of them drinking through a straw attached to her purple tinted face mask. After they all drank and refilled their glasses, a Turian male with half his right mandible missing lifted his glass. 

 

“To Samara. The most dedicated mother I’ve ever seen.”

 

“Hear, hear!” the massive Krogan on his right said with a chuckle, misinterpreting the Turian’s toast as a joke. 

 

They hit another shot, the redhead woman with a little less zeal this time. As the Turian male refilled their glasses with his long arms, the tanned woman on the hawkish woman’s right gave her upper arm an affectionate squeeze. The redhead brushed her hand away, and the tanned woman asked in a low voice and a posh British accent, “Shepard, why didn’t you talk to me before this? You know I’m here for you, and I’ve been back on Earth for a couple of weeks.”

 

“Later,” Commander Shepard told her. “We’ll talk after I’m good and drunk.”

 

The Quarian woman in the purple bodysuit and facemask lifted her glass. “To Miranda Lawson.” Her odd accent had a tinge of drunken slur already. “What a bitch.” She slurped her drink through her straw as the Krogan chuckled raucously again. After his awkward, jolting laughs died down, the Quarian added, her head slumped towards the table, “God, I miss her.” The blue Asari woman sitting to her right rubbed her upper back through her suit. 

 

Another human woman spoke next. She wore black leather, a shaved mohawk, and multitudinous tattoos that almost made her race ambiguous. “Yeah, she was a bitch, but I wish she saw this whole thing through to the end. Maybe then she would be a bit less irritating.” Her tone made it sound a little like she was being critical of the woman for dying, as though it were laziness that did her in. 

 

A seemingly robotic woman spoke, though she held no glass. The man with the baseball cap hanging on her shoulder certainly did, though, looking like he’d begun drinking before the rest of them. “To Mordin Solus. Possibly the most intelligent and talented man I’ve ever met, and certainly among the most heroic.”

 

The man hanging on her lifted his glass and spoke before the rest drank. “To the Normandy, again. And that fucking jungle she died in. Y’know, it was so hot, I could barely wear my leg brace-”

 

The robotic woman chuckled and wrapped her arm around his shoulder, and the sentiment appeared to get him to shut up as he cuddled into her. The tanned human woman wondered in passing how comfortable it could possibly to cuddle with a robot. The toasts continued.

 

“To Legion. The creepy bastard probably saved the whole Geth race.”

 

“To Thane Krios. At least he’ll go down a hero instead of some asshole wasting away in a hospital bed.”

 

“To Tali’Zorah vas Normandy. Now I’m Tali’Zorah vas Nothing.” The Asari woman helped her walk out of the bar after that, Tali sniffling and sobbing.

 

“To Kelly Chambers. She didn’t deserve the way that she went out.” 

 

“To Ashley Williams. The first of a long line of my friends to die.”

 

“To Jacob Taylor’s dad. I really wish I was the one that got to put him in the ground.”

 

“To the Citadel, one of the great mysteries of the galaxy finally solved.”

 

“To the Reapers, and the bloodiest fucking war this galaxy had better ever see, because I’m sure as Hell not saving it again.” 

 

After Shepard said this, most of the table set to chuckling again, but only for a moment, the weight of the meeting squeezing the mirth out of the group like a hand with a tube of toothpaste. The last toast came from the woman sitting beside Shepard. “To my toothbrush. It died to save the Normandy, and, by extension, the rest of the galaxy. The smallest mass effect field to decide the galaxy’s fate, too, probably.” She smirked up at Shepard at that, and the commander couldn’t help but curl up the corner of her mouth in return. 

 

People rose and left as either the alcohol or the memories became too much for them. When the robotic woman mentioned the sacrifice that uncountable Krogans made when the genophage was introduced, the Krogan man himself stood up and left. Shepard felt a pang of pride that he left instead of smashing the robot’s head in for calling it a sacrifice instead of a genocide. The robot left with her man soon after, leaving Commander Shepard, the Turian male, Garrus Vakarian, the human woman Samantha Traynor, ever by the commander’s side, and the extraordinarily tattooed human woman, Jack. The tattooed woman stood up and left as the three others at the table just sat there, staring around and trying not to fall out of their chairs. 

 

“You know, Shepard,” Garrus said after a couple of minutes of silence, “there’s about a million things that could’ve killed you and me by now. I say we leave before something stupid like alcohol poisoning or exhaustion gets us both in the same night.”

 

Shepard shook her head, swaying in her seat. “No, Garrus. Sammy here wanted to talk about somethin’ and you’re my old-ass friend, so let’s all jus’ sit and talk, alright?”

 

The Turian sighed, but slurred, “As you say, commander,” and leaned back in his chair. 

 

Samantha rubbed some of the nausea from her head with the heel of her hand and spoke up. “I suppose, if you really want him here. Commander, there’s a lot I wanted to say to you. There’s a lot that I thought I wouldn’t get to, and didn’t until the Alliance got the relays up and running again over the past month. I thought that so many of you had died. And then, I got here, and saw you two sitting at this table, laughing about something, and it hit me like a ton of goddamn bricks, but happy bricks, right?” 

 

“I hear you,” Garrus assured her.

 

“That’s good.” Samantha turned to Shepard and latched onto her hand before the commander could snake away. “You’re her best friend. You should hear it, too, when I say that it’s not the vodka talking and I love you, Shepard. And there’s something I need to ask you, too.”

 

Mortified, Shepard hung her head back, letting Samantha hold onto her hands. “Yeah?”

 

“Are you still enlisted?” When it wasn’t something insane, Shepard let out a breath of relief. “If you are, then I swear to God, I’m going to cry.”

 

“I’m not, Samantha. Don’ worry.”

 

Still, Samantha sniffled, and when she looked back up to Shepard, the redhead saw tears in her eyes. “It’s a good thing that I didn’t wear mascara today.” The commander let out a sympathetic chuckle and wiped away a tear that had just leaked onto Samantha’s cheek, almost sticking her thumb into the woman’s eye. Samantha showed a melancholy smile and held Shepard’s hand to her cheek for a moment before saying, “Did you, uh, have anything to say?”

 

“You’re a good Samantha. But you can’t love me, we’re not even co-workers, an’ I’ve got a butcher’s knife on my face.”

 

“What?”

 

Commander Shepard raised her free hand to prod at the burn scar that ran down the outside of her right eyebrow to cover most of her right cheek. “It’s as big as a butcher’s knife, Samantha, an’ you’re all pretty an’ shit, so there.”

 

All at once, they heard a hacking sound from Garrus’s direction, and by the time they’d turned their heads to look at him, vomit was pouring out of his mandibles onto the table. He looked up, wiping his face with a napkin and absentmindedly swirling it around on the table. “You two are so gross, I literally just vomited because of it. Just get a fucking room already. We all know that going up to her room to play chess was really to fuckin’ fuck her, Samantha.”

 

Samantha’s face turned a ruddy red, and Shepard pointed a finger in Garrus’s general direction, but somewhere to his left. Or right, she couldn’t tell. “Listen here, bucko. That was totally platonic and reciprocateted and everything, and we did nothin’ of the sort, even if I mighta sneaked a peek at her in the shower.”

 

“You had such a nice shower,” Samantha said, laying her head on Shepard’s shoulder. This time, the commander didn’t brush her off. 

 

“Yeah, yeah. You can’ lie to me, anyway, so just have your happiness now that the war’s over. An’ I’ll be here, getting drunk alone, like always.” He took another shot. 

 

Commander Shepard just sat there, confused eyes lingering on the swaying, doubled form of Garrus Vakarian. Her left hand glided to the top of Samantha’s head to pet her stupid, immaculate hair, and Shepard muttered without thinking, “Kelly would know how to help him.”

 

Traynor burped, and Shepard chuckled, too much, jolting against Samantha, drawing she and Garrus into chuckles of their own, and they took turns laughing, with sobs intermingled, for several minutes. Except for the commander. She never cried. 

 

After they faded into silence again, Shepard noticed someone approaching from the corner of her eye. She lolled her head to the side, and found that she couldn’t recognize them, even though the copious amounts of alcohol somehow didn’t make her vision terribly blurry. A young man in Alliance marine getup, minus the armor, approached, his mouth hanging open. “You’re Commander Shepard, aren’t you?” he asked, and suddenly snapped his legs together, bringing his hand up to his forehead in a salue. 

 

Shepard chuckled. “At ease, soljerr. I’m a civvie now. You want an autograph or something, is that what this is?”

 

He hesitantly let his salute and ready stance fade to something more comfortable. “No, ma’am, that’s fine. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate and, well, idolize you, but you’ve probably signed enough autographs for twenty lifetimes.”

 

“You fuckin’ betcha. Twenty two, matter of fact. I counted.” The soldier looked surprised to be smiling.”What do you want, then?”

 

“I - I just wanted to see you, ma’am. See what the galaxy’s greatest hero is like in the flesh.”

 

“Am I everything you wanted, kid?” She spread open her arms, giving him a sarcastic grin.

 

“No.” He looked down and away, ashamed. “No, you’re not seven feet tall and currently in the process of annihilating a Reaper, so no. Um, my CO is going to check if I’m in my room in about twenty minutes, so I ought to go.” He pointed towards the door from his waist and started away, but Shepard grabbed his arm, stopping him with an iron grip and terrifying him.

 

“I’m always disappointing, kid. Your heros will always disappoint. So be your own.” She let him go, and turned to Samantha, seeing Garrus asleep in the mostly mopped up vomit on the table out of the corner of her eye. “Inspirational as fuck, huh?”

 

“Absolutely.”


End file.
